But once you attract that traffic (be it through a compelling storefront, a killer omnichannel marketing strategy, or effective word-of-mouth), you should focus on crafting a personalized experience so unbeatable that those customers come back again and again.

Here, we discuss four tips to turn your brick and mortar spot (or spots) into a personalized wonderland. Let’s get to it!

Cultivate a killer team — and give them the tools they need to create memorable experiences.

All the tips we discuss in this post are actionable and practical, but this first one’s the most important. The employees you hire will make or break an in-store personalization experience.

We’ve written before on how to find and recruit superstar employees — but once you have them, it’s essential that you empower them to give your customers incredible experiences by providing them with the right tools, knowledge, and skill set. So how do you do that?

By putting them through the proper training. With the right training, each member of your team will be able to walk that critical line between being helpful and overbearing, and they’ll know how to use your business’s customer data and analytics to provide each shopper with a memorable and personalized experience.

Your training program should be tailored to the needs of your unique business; if you don’t already have one in place, either develop your own or adapt it from that of an existing company you admire.

Take Apple, for example. The retail titan teaches each of its store employees to follow the 5 Steps of Service (a technique Steve Jobs originally learned from the Ritz-Carlton). Here’s the breakdown:

Approach customers with a personalized, warm welcome.

Probe politely to understand all the customer’s needs.

Present a solution for the customer to take home today.

Listen for and resolve any issues or concerns.

End with a fond farewell and an invitation to return.

Armed with a specific blueprint for each customer interaction (and, of course, in-depth knowledge of Apple products and tech), Apple store employees can focus on satisfying each shopper’s specific needs and making sure everyone leaves happy. Use this as a jumping-off point for your own in-store training plan!

Invest in location-specific technology.

Location technology such as beacons has become an increasingly important tool in the quest for in-store personalization. If you don’t already use location technology in your physical shops, it’s time to consider implementing it.

First, let’s talk about how this tech works. Via Bluetooth, beacons use your customers’ mobile devices to track when they enter your store and where they go once they do. This information allows you to target those customers with personalized notifications and to gain insights into their in-store behavior.

From these insights, you can take personalization even further. Let’s say your beacons tell you a particular customer is spending lots of time in the section of your store reserved for athletic shoes. Using this information, the beacon can ping a customized discount for that product category (or even that specific product, depending on the layout of your store) straight to that shopper’s phone.

Beacons and other similar devices provide you with personalization capabilities that’ll soon be ubiquitous across brick and mortar stores. To that end, we recommend finding ways to leverage location technology in out-of-the-box, creative ways.

Instead of simply pushing sale or promotion notifications to customers’ phones or tracking their in-store paths to offer tailored communications, use this opportunity to cultivate and enhance your brand and to set yourself apart from the competition.

Some examples for inspiration?

Major League Baseball using beacons to tell game-goers where the shortest lines for beer and food are located

Citibank using beacons to push “virtual keys” to its customers’ phones, allowing them wallet-free access to ATM lobbies

Lord & Taylor using mobile couponing company SnipSnap to send promotions to customers based on their location within stores

Harness the power of mobile.

It might seem counter-intuitive — after all, it’s easy to assume that ecommerce and mcommerce (mobile commerce) are the nemeses of brick and mortar retail — but integrating the mobile and in-store experiences is essential to creating seamless customer journeys (for more on improving your business’s omnichannel strategy, head here).

According to a recent study by Nielsen, 87 percent of smartphone and tablet users shop on their mobile devices. That’s a huge number, and brick and mortar retailers can capitalize on it to personalize the in-store experience.

In addition to funneling location technology through mobile like we just discussed, you can use the fact that nearly every one of your customers has a mobile device connected to the internet to your distinct advantage. How? Integrate your mobile app with the in-store experience you’re attempting to create.

(Don’t have a mobile app? Now’s a great time to think about developing one — but if that’s not feasible for you at the moment, you can still implement the ideas in this section through location technology or by partnering with other mobile services.)

Here are some suggestions:

When a customer enters the store, ping his phone with a notification to open your mobile app for a special discount.

Encourage customers to keep your app open as they browse the store by allowing them to scan barcodes to learn more about products.

When a customer does scan a barcode, offer a small discount on that product.

Recommend other products based on customers’ scanning and browsing histories.

Walgreens, one of the biggest drugstore chains in North America, has integrated mobile into its in-store experience in an effort to make things easier for its customers. On the Walgreens app, you can refill a prescription, collect paperless coupons, and map out your actual visit by perusing store layouts. The idea behind all this? To incentivize customers to go to an actual Walgreens location and to give them a quick, painless experience once they’re there.

Another retailer doing innovative things in the in-store/mobile space is Neiman Marcus. The retailer’s NM Service app allows customers to chat with their favorite sales associates whenever they need, select items to try on in-store at a later time, and enjoy a personalized “VIP experience” when they arrive.

Embrace showrooming.

Showrooming is the act of using your mobile device to browse or shop online while also in a brick and mortar store. When customers do this, they’re essentially looking for better deals on the same or similar products. And thanks to the limitlessness of the internet, there’s nothing you can do to stop them.

But you know the saying: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. So instead of despairing over how widespread showrooming has become, embrace the trend for its sales opportunities. Consider these tips:

Offer price matching. This is an excellent way to ensure showrooming doesn’t steal any customers away from your store — so if your bottom line can handle it, implement price matching in your brick and mortar locations.

Train your team to upsell. This goes back to the importance of hiring a great team (tip #1 in this post). A clever employee — one who knows how to connect with shoppers on a personal level — truly can make or break a sale. The interaction between a member of your team and an in-store customer can determine whether or not a customer will leave to purchase online after showrooming or instead reward a personalized experience with an in-store purchase.

Put product reviews front-and-center. One of the things people are doing when they showroom is, of course, looking for cheaper prices — but they’re also looking for reviews on products themselves. If a customer is able to use your app to peruse (positive) customer reviews of a particular item, he’s more likely to walk out of the store with that item.

Will you implement any of these tips in your brick and mortar stores(s)? Let us know in the comments!

In a piece published by the Harvard Business Review back in mid-November, Paul Clarke (Chief Technology Officer at Ocado) discussed the widespread and indisputable effects of technology on retail. But he also noted an interesting discrepancy, saying that “after many years spent working for the world’s largest online-only grocery retailer, I am still amazed at how many businesses appear oblivious to the impact these forces will have on them.”

You might think retail and technology have become one and the same — but when you look at what’s coming up in the world of retail tech, it’s clear the blurring of these lines is just getting started. What’s also clear? Retailers who fail to realize the importance of technology will fall way, way behind and might even go under entirely.

In this piece, we’re discussing a few noteworthy technological innovations likely to establish themselves as major players in the industry in the near future. Have a read below.

1) Visual search technology

There’s no doubt we live in a visual world — so it stands to reason that shoppers want to search for things visually rather than through writing. Visual search technology has been around for several years now, but only recently has it become sophisticated enough to warrant mentioning it in the same company as traditional search engines.

Take Slyce, for example. Used by the likes of Urban Outfitters, Best Buy, and Neiman Marcus, Slyce allows users to take pictures of anything around them and then uses its image recognition technology to search the internet for exact or similar finds.

See a shirt you like on a celebrity in a magazine? Snap a picture, and use Slyce to locate the exact item or something like it. Spot a killer sofa at a house party? Push an image through Slyce, and buy it for yourself. Watch the video below to see Slyce in action via Neiman Marcus’s app.

This kind of search technology is the logical next step in a world dominated by visuals and imagery. Along with cracking open a new retail channel, visual search has the potential to enhance customers’ shopping experiences — which is the main reason retailers should keep it in mind.

Pro tip: The potential for visual search technology is immense, so players are already finding niches in the market. If there’s not already, there’ll soon be at least one visual search tech company tailored to your industry, so do some research to figure out which one might work best for you. And don’t underestimate the value of this up-and-coming technology. If it can make your customers’ shopping experiences better, it’s worth paying attention to.

2) Chatbots (artificial intelligence)

The crux of the matter when it comes to artificial intelligence in retail is its potential to radically personalize the customer experience — and as we noted in our 2017 Retail Trends and Predictions piece, “consumers are searching more and more for personalized shopping experiences they can really connect with, so 2017 should see retailers testing new ways to appeal to this desire.”

AI presents several different ways retailers can do this. Right off the bat, let’s note that the visual search technology we discussed above is, in itself, a form of AI. Visual search tech is designed to give users a curated selection of results, eliminating unwanted and irrelevant items and thereby optimizing their search experiences.

Another prominent example of AI in retail? Intelligent chatbots.

We know you might be used to irritating, unsophisticated chatbots, but stick with us here: the versions of the future will take customers’ shopping experiences to a new level entirely.

Using AI technology such as Amazon’s, retailers will be able to create chatbots with conversational and problem-solving skills equal to or surpassing that of human agents. These intelligent chatbots will be able to more accurately tend to your query or issue, and they’ll be so well-developed you probably won’t even register that you’re talking to a machine — which means actual humans will have more time to devote to solving bigger, more complex problems.

But the chatbots you’ll soon start to see more of aren’t just resolving customer service issues; they also have applications for a complete overhaul of the shopping experience.

Imagine hopping onto a department store’s website to shop for a holiday gift. Along with your own personally optimized version of the site that’ll soon be made possible by online learning (another form of AI), you’re greeted by the store’s customized chatbot, which asks if it can help you find anything. You tell the bot what you’re looking for and answer the questions it asks you, and then it gives you a gift guide tailored to the person you’re buying for.

No more endless searching or sifting through product categories — these new chatbots will truly usher in the era of ease and convenience.

3) “Just walk out”

A couple of weeks ago, Amazon launched a game-changing project: a grocery store without checkout lines. The announcement of this groundbreaking “just-walk-out” technology had industry pundits simultaneously lauding the service for its single-minded customer focus and bemoaning the “end” of retail as we know it.

But whatever your opinion on Amazon Go and the technology that powers it, there’s no question that it and similar services (i.e. Sam’s Club Scan & Go) have the potential to reshape the landscape of retail.

So why are they such a big deal?

The “just-walk-out” idea (and, to a lesser extent, the “scan-and-go” concept) takes customer-facing operations to the next level — actually eliminating the person “facing” the customer and allowing said customer to complete the entire shopping experience without interacting with another human being.

At Amazon Go, customers use the free Amazon Go app to enter the store. As they shop, sensors detect what they pick up (and what they put back), adding items to their Amazon carts and charging the payment method connected to their Amazon accounts when they’re detected leaving the store.

It’s revolutionary: no wait times, no checkout lines, no stress, and no person-to-person interactions.

Sam’s Club Scan & Go is similar, if not quite as mindblowingly futuristic. Using the Scan & Go app, Sam’s Club customers scan barcodes as they shop. The app puts everything into a virtual cart, and customers then pay from their phones. They exit by showing the e-receipt to the employee at the door.

So while these and other similar innovations aren’t exactly the same, their overarching concept actually is — the more automation and the less human interaction (at least at the perpetual pain point that is checkout), the better, they seem to be saying.

Pro tip: Think very carefully before you bring technology like “just walk out” or “scan and go” into your business. As many industry experts have said since the announcement of Amazon Go, these types of tech might very well portend a certain doom for the place of actual human employees in retail. But if you operate a larger business and have many stores, something like this might work in your favor. Just exercise caution if and when you decide!

The bottom line

There are, of course, other technological innovations that’ll have major effects on retail in the near future — but we think these three are particularly interesting. How do you feel about them? Do you plan on implementing visual search technology, chatbots, or some iteration of “just walk out” in your retail business? What’s your take on the very idea of “just walk out” technologies? Let us know in the comments!

We live in an increasingly mobile world. Pretty much everyone has (and spends a great deal of time on) a cell phone, and devices like tablets and smartwatches are prominent features of today’s society. It’s no surprise, then, that for several years now mobile technology has been one of the biggest and fastest-growing trends in the retail world — something that’s perhaps most true in the United States, where much of this technology is pioneered or widely tested.

So why should you care about mobile trends? Let’s take a look at some statistics.

These numbers are big, and it’s safe to say they’ll only continue to grow. Here, we’ve outlined three key trends on the rise in the U.S., as well as some quick tips to help you take advantage of their potential.

Mobile payments

What’s the point of all our fancy technology if it can’t help us save time when we’re shopping? Consumers are increasingly looking to retailers for convenient payment options that don’t involve waiting in line at the cash register — and retailers are responding with custom apps, adoption of mobile wallets, and cloud-based systems that allow customers to bypass checkout lines to complete their purchases.

Mobile payments are one of the biggest trends in retail at the moment (PYMNTS.com even said they’ll“kill countertop checkout”), with business giants such as Starbucks, Target, and Walmart implementing quick, easy solutions for their customers.

Quick tip: If it makes sense for you, consider introducing “buy online and pick up in-store” within your business. The same PYMNTS.com piece calls it “the hottest trend in retail” and says “retailers love it since the vast majority of consumers — 60 percent according to RetailNext — spend more when they get to the store to pick up their loot.”

If in-store pickup isn’t a great option for you, look into other ways to minimize your customers’ time in the checkout line. The more efficient your payment process is, the happier they’ll be — and happy customers are more inclined to shop with you again.

Location-based technology

One of the best ways to target the61% of shoppers who say they “expect to use their smartphones more in-store”? Location-based technology.

Usingdevices such as beacons, retailers can pinpoint shoppers using their mobile devices in physical shops and push tailored messages, promotions, and mobile-specific loyalty programs to their phones, tablets, or wearables (such as watches).

The numbers surrounding beacons and proximity marketing are huge; Business Insider’sBI Intelligence estimated that beacons would influence nearly $45 billion USD of in-store retail sales in 2016, and retailers such as Urban Outfitters, Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, and Best Buy have implemented them in their stores.

Location-based technology has the potential to create a seamless customer experience, to elevate your brand in the eyes of consumers, and to propel your business into the future — but it’s important to be mindful of the potential risks, such as security breaches and personal privacy infringement.

Quick tip: Don’t underestimate the value of location-based technology. Invest in whichever kind will work for you (in addition to beacons, options include Wi-Fi, RFID, and GPS), and use it to give customers more enjoyable experiences. Some ideas? Reward them with 15% percent off every third time they visit your store, or detail the cool new features of your just-in products.

Personalization

We’ve all seen it happen: one minute you’re looking at a pair of headphones on Amazon, and the next you’re seeing an ad for that exact product on your Facebook feed. That’s obviously personalized advertising, but it speaks to a greater mobile trend within the retail world.

The personalization of the customer experience has become a hot topic in the industry as retailers do everything they can to stand out to consumers amongst an increasingly competitive field. As American Expressputs it, “the more personalized a shopping experience you offer, the more shoppers may want to buy from you.”

After all, everyone wants to feel special, right? If you can make a customer feel as though he’s separate from the masses, he’s more likely to want to engage with your business and its products.

According to an Accenture Interactive study on personalization, “56% of consumers are more likely to shop at a retailer in store or online that recognizes them by name,” and “remembering purchase histories will win over 65% of shoppers.”

So how can retailers leverage data to create more personalized experiences?

Quick tip: Come up with non-invasive ways to get more data from your customers. Ask for an email address at checkout, or collect information through your POS system. Once you have the data, put it into action. Craft targeted marketing campaigns, send discount codes and exclusive offers on special dates such as birthdays, and use purchase histories to let customers know when their favorite products are back in stock or on sale.

Head to the comments to let us know how you’ll be taking advantage of these mobile trends!

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